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Giving Gardens a Hand

April Smith, a novelist and TV writer and producer, who lives with her husband in a Dutch colonial a few blocks from the ocean, said she signed up to learn from an experienced gardener. “I have a little kitchen garden with herbs, but I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, adding that it took awhile to find someone whom she was willing to let dig up her front yard.

Ms. Smith recently found a match in Derek Markolf, an environmental consultant who hasn’t had a yard to tend since he moved with his wife and daughter from Santa Barbara five years ago. “He said things like, ‘I can’t wait to get my hands on a shovel,’ ” Ms. Smith recalled. “O.K., he’s the guy.”

For Mr. Markolf, the large size of Ms. Smith’s front yard (30 feet by 30 feet) was appealing, as was her interest in being involved in the process. The two families plan to grow organic vegetables like cabbage, broccoli and carrots and expect “a good amount of produce coming out of this,” Mr. Markolf said.

Ms. Smith has no qualms about uprooting her grassy front lawn in favor of veggies. “I grew up in the Bronx,” she said. “I’m not used to lawns. I’m not attracted to lawns. They don’t seem to make a lot of sense.”

STEVEN KURUTZ

George Weigel’s Winter Season Tip of the Week: Holiday plants other than …

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It’s no wonder poinsettias are our favorite holiday plant for their showy beauty. But plenty of other plants make interesting choices, too.

Stauffers of Kissel Hill greenhouse manager Joy Boileau shows garden writer George Weigel a few that she likes in this week’s garden video.

For more garden tips, check out the links below.

Look for George Weigel’s Garden Tip of the Week each Thursday. George Weigel is the garden writer for the Patriot-News and also owner of a garden-consulting business for do-it-yourselfers, garden-tour host, frequent garden speaker, Pennsylvania Certified Horticulturist and certified gardening nut.

(The following is a news release from the province of BC)

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Ty Binfet and Frances

Education professor incorporates therapy dog into curriculum and research

A mutt named Frances from the streets of LA has found her calling as a teaching assistant. UBC education professor Ty Binfet rescued the female dog just over a year ago and put her through extensive training to become a highly skilled therapy dog.

Animal-assisted therapy promotes social and emotional well-being in individuals through animal contact. It is designed to calm clients, facilitate social interactions, build confidence and can bring individuals out of their shell.

Binfet and Frances arrived in August at UBC’s Okanagan campus, where the dynamic duo provides education students with a unique classroom learning experience.

“I use Frances in my behavior management and childhood development classes in both an active and passive way. It is a progressive way of teaching, and one that I’ve found to be very effective,” says Binfet.

For instance, in Binfet’s behavior management class, education students strategize and plan a behaviour exercise to teach Frances, and then attempt to do so within a set amount of time in front of their classmates. This challenge provides a safe and honest training ground for students to learn about approximations and shaping of behavior, explains Binfet.

“We draw parallels between Frances and kids in classrooms,” he says. “I am in no way saying kids are like dogs, but there are a lot of commonalities in how, as teachers, we might manage our approaches and guide the development of desirable behaviour. Frances is a very compliant participant who allows students a living lesson where they can assess their own delivery of skills, as well as practice and hone their skill development.”

In addition to his innovative classroom work with Frances, Binfet will begin a research project this February by examining how animal-assisted therapy impacts feelings of homesickness and sense of social isolation in first-year university students living in residence at UBC’s Okanagan campus.

“Thanks to Frances and funding that has come our way, we’re looking at the use of animal assisted therapy by matching 10 St. John Ambulance volunteer dog handlers and dogs with homesick students here on campus,” says Binfet.

His job is to empirically assess whether the use of these dogs on campus can increase a sense of belonging and institutional affiliation to combat some of the loneliness, social isolation, and home sickness students can experience during their first year of university.

The project, which will run for eight weeks, is called Building Academic Retention with K9s (BARK), and is supported by Ian Cull, Associate Vice President Students.

“There’s a lot of information available about animal-assisted therapy but very little rigorous, empirical work, so that’s my contribution to the field.”

Binfet is quick to note that he does not advocate everyone bringing their dog to work, and wants to remind people that Frances has advanced behavior certification and university approval.

However, ultimately, he would like to work towards establishing a K9 daycare for the pets of UBC staff and faculty that also serves as a drop-in centre for students to connect with pets and allows them establish feelings of connectedness, reducing their sense of isolation.

“I purposely drive to campus every day on Innovation Way to remind myself that I am here to be a different kind of thinker. I’m here to push the boundaries a bit, and here to do what I think is intuitively good for the social-emotional well-being of students and evaluate that in an empirically rigorous way,” says Binfet.

“Having dogs on campus is one way of maybe getting us to reconsider things like how people feel accepted in classrooms, in dorms, and what a community can look like with the addition of four-legged companions.”

To view a UBCO.TV video interview with Ty Binfet and Frances visit http://ubco.tv/frontend2.php?cm=movies/NextBigThingBinfet.flv.

Ty Binfet and Frances

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Home Building and Remodeling Show opens Jan. 11

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The Metropolitan Builders Association’s annual Home Building and Remodeling Show is set for Jan. 11 through 13 at the Delta Center in downtown Milwaukee.

With the theme, “Building Lifestyles,” the show will offer visitors ideas on designing, building, remodeling, decorating, landscaping and entertaining.

Among special displays will be 2013 Kitchen Inspirations and Man Cave, powered by Apple.

Admission to the show is $8 at the door for adults. Children 12 and younger are admitted free. Visitors can receive a $1 discount on adult admission when they donate two non-persishable food items at the door. Visit MBAhomeshow.com for more information.

The show will be open Friday, Jan. 11, from 2 to 8 p.m.; Saturday, Jan. 12, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sunday, Jan. 13, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Battlefront in the Front Yard

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Mr. Helvenston spent last Super Bowl Sunday planting the garden outside his 1940s cottage, in a neighborhood of modest houses close to downtown. Orlando’s growing season is nearly year-round, and Mr. Helvenston, a self-employed sustainability consultant for the building trade, said he saw the garden as “a budget thing” — a money-saving supplement to the chicken coop he and his wife, Jennifer, installed a few months later behind their house.

Since his backyard doesn’t get much sun, Mr. Helvenston ripped out the lawn in his front yard and put the 25-by-25-foot, micro-irrigated plot there. The unorthodox landscaping went largely unnoticed for months, perhaps because he lives on a dead-end street next to Interstate 4.

Then, in September, Pedro Pedin, who lives in Puerto Rico but owns the rental property next door, visited with his wife and cast a displeasing eye on his neighbor’s front yard. “All the houses are pretty much kept neat,” Mr. Pedin said, “but his house looks like a farm.”

Mr. Pedin contacted the city, which cited the Helvenstons for violating section 60.207 of Orlando’s Land Development Code (failure to maintain ground cover on property) and set a deadline of Nov. 7 to comply.

Instead, Mr. Helvenston stood outside his polling site during the last election circulating a petition to change the current code, and then appeared on a local TV news station, telling the reporter and any city officials who happened to be watching, “You’ll take my house before you take my vegetable garden.”

Gardeners aren’t generally known for their civil disobedience, yet in the last couple of years several have run afoul of local officials for tending vegetables in their front yards. In Ferguson, Mo., a stay-at-home father was ordered to dig up his 55 varieties of edible plants. In Tulsa, Okla., a gardener who didn’t want to remove her veggies and medicinal herbs saw them largely cleared by the city. In Oak Park, Mich., a mother of six named Julie Bass faced up to 93 days in jail for refusing to take out the raised beds in front of her home and plant what the city deemed “suitable” ground cover.

These and other cases have drawn national attention, as well as outrage from gardeners, some of whom have begun referring to the isolated skirmishes as a broader “war on gardens.”

Roger Doiron, the founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a group promoting food gardens, has marshaled support for Ms. Bass and others. “If you define a war as a struggle between opposing forces, this does fit the bill,” he said. The opposing forces, in Mr. Doiron’s view, are progressive-minded gardeners and backward-thinking municipalities. Gardeners, he said, “need to push back. This isn’t about a single garden; this is about the right to garden.”

Though rooted in something as innocuous as vegetables, these disputes touch on divisive issues like homeowner rights, property values, sustainability, food integrity and the aesthetics of the traditional American lawn. Ecologists and libertarians alike have gotten into the debate, the latter asserting that the codification of gardens is just one more way the government tells people how to live.

Jeff Rowes, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm based in Arlington, Va., that is advising Mr. Helvenston, is adamant. “It’s the micromanagement of land that invades your liberty in a thousand small ways,” he said.

Invoking the nation’s agrarian past, Mr. Rowes noted, “Washington, Jefferson and Madison were all farmers.”

For Mr. Pedin, the issue is less about the inalienable right to grow snap peas at home than it is about the prerogative to not stand idly by while your property value plummets. Mr. Helvenston’s garden is “messy,” Mr. Pedin said, and will attract rats and lower the worth of his rental home. Mr. Pedin also questioned Mr. Helvenston’s commitment to maintaining the mulch-covered plot.

Winners of 26th Annual Keep Montgomery County Beautiful Awards

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The county’s Department of Transportation on Dec. 4 announced 56 awards to community groups, businesses, public institutions and other organizations whose landscaping projects enhance commercial or residential common areas, county roadsides and medians and other public locations.

The 26^th annual Keep Montgomery County Beautiful community beautification awards honored:

municipal street plantings;
community plantings;
community landscape projects;
outdoor projects at commercial and retail sites;
outdoor projects at schools, government buildings, hospitals, and churches;
sustained maintenance;
photographs of Montgomery County landmarks;
adopt-a-road participants; and
forestry stewardship.

Click here for a complete list of winners from across Montgomery County.

The following are winners from the Rockville area:

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONAL for outdoor projects at schools, government buildings, hospitals, churches or libraries:

Award of Excellence: Aspen Hill Library Gardens, Aspen Hill Garden Club, Aspen Hill.

CITYSCAPE for municipal street plantings in median strips, near traffic ramps and next to sidewalks:

Award of Excellence: Mattie Stepanek Park Peace Garden, City of Rockville.

Award of Excellence: Veirs Mill Road Landscape Enhancements, City of Rockville (New).

Award of Distinction: East Rockville Greenway, City of Rockville.

Award of Excellence: Park Road and S. Stonestreet Land Enhancements, City of Rockville.

Award of Excellence: Pump House at Croydon Park, City of Rockville, (Environmental).

Award of Excellence: The Ponds at Fallsgrove, City of Rockville.

COMMUNITY PROFESSIONAL for community landscaping projects designed and maintained by professional landscape architects or contractors:

Award of Excellence: Grosvenor Park Grosvenor Park Maintenance Trust Association Monument, Lancaster Landscapes, Rockville.

COMMERCIAL/RETAIL for outdoor projects at facilities such as shopping malls, restaurants, retail businesses, gas stations, etc.:

Award of Excellence: National Auto Body, Rockville.

Award of Excellence: Tower Oaks, The Brickman Group, Rockville.

Award of Merit: Twinbrook Sunoco, Rockville.

Award of Excellence: Lobsang Executive Shell, Rockville, (Environmental).

PUBLIC INSTITUTIONAL for outdoor projects at schools, government buildings, hospitals, churches or libraries:

Award of Excellence: The Jewish Community Center, Ruppert Landscaping, Rockville.

Award of Excellence: Master Gardeners Demonstration Gardens, Derwood Agricultural Farm Park, Derwood.

Award of Excellence: Viers Mill Baptist Church, Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, Rockville, (Environmental/New).

Award of Excellence: St. James Episcopal Church Vestry Gardens, American Plant Landscape Division, Rockville, (Environmental).

Award of Excellence: Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, American Plant Landscape, Rockville.

YOUTH for outdoor projects by an individual or group who are younger than 19 years old. Adult supervision is permitted, but the majority of a project must be completed by youth:

Award of Distinction: Rockville High School Conservation Landscape, Rockville High Horticulture and Science Class Students, Rockville.

SUSTAINED MAINTENANCE for previous triple award winners of the Award of Excellence:

First Year/ Cityscape: Rockville Town Square, Ruppert Landscaping, Rockville

Second Year/ Community Non-Professional: Cambridge Walk II Homeowners Association, Rockville

Second Year/ Community Non-Professional: Rockshire Entranceway, Rockshire Garden Club, Rockville

Photography MONTGOMERY COUNTY YOUTH—for those younger than 19 years of age who wish to compete against others their age.

First: Helpless Hungry But Still Together, Tatiana Harris, Gaithersburg

Second: The First Sign of Summer, Bethany Pereira, Rockville

Third: Montgomery County Salutes America, Anna Meleney, Rockville

Photography MONTGOMERY COUNTY LANDMARKS—Any photo taken outdoors in Montgomery County of a natural or manmade commonly recognized landmark or scene.

First: Overlook Panorama, Keegan Barber, Rockville

Second: Forgotten Memories, Mamqalika Pereira, Rockville

Third: Seneca Schoolhouse, Linda Joy, Gaithersburg.

Photography MONTGOMERY COUNTY AT WORK—Any photo taken of one or more people at work, contributing to the livability and splendor of the county.

First: Yellow + Blue = Green, Judith MacArthur, Rockville.

Clark County’s historic Summit Grove lodge restored as event and retreat center

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Dick Colf, co-owner of the new Summit Grove lodge, with manager Liz Cerveny.
Dean Baker/Special to The Oregonian

The once-dilapidated roadhouse on Timmen Road just south of La Center has taken on a new life and is open for business as Summit Grove, a retreat center in northern Clark County.

The building, which dates to the 1880s, had fallen into ruin over the past decade. Now it’s sparkling fresh, with intricate rockwork and woodwork of native fir, alder and cedar; 20-foot ceilings; polished floors and beams; burled banisters; and carved bars, along with a gleaming state-of-the-art kitchen. It’s got state-of-the-art video, Wi-Fi and sound systems; 5 acres of woods; a covered garden and gazebo; and a 2,300-square-foot banquet hall suitable for 400 guests.

“It’s going to be the talk of the town,” said Kelly Punteney, the area’s longtime park guru, who supervised the landscaping for the remodel. “It was a famous place in the old days, kind of a Republican enclave.”

The new Summit Grove aims to host weddings, reunions, private parties and corporate meetings.

“We had people that wanted to operate it as a bar, and so on, but we didn’t want to do that,” said co-owner Dick Colf. “We’ve had six or seven events so far,” including a couple of weddings, a funeral, gatherings for the Fort Vancouver National Historical Site and for Clark College alumni, and the retirement party of La Center Police Chief Tim Hopkin.

Summit Grove was originally known as Headley’s Camp, a watering hole for guests in carriages. In the early 1920s, William and Mary Marshall purchased the building and its 5-acre site and added eight cabins. By 1927, they had converted the property to a rustic but luxurious hideaway that boasted a kidney-shaped indoor fish pool and fine dining.

Civic leader Margaret Colf Hepola, 95, remembers going to school dances in the building when she was a teen at Woodland High School.

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Headley Auto Camp, better known as Headley’s Camp, was the forerunner of today’s Summit Grove lodge.

Courtesy of Colf Family

“I know Shirley Temple was there, and a president,” she said. “I don’t know about the rest” — guests are said to have included celebrities such as Jack Benny, Clark Gable, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy — “but they say all these other people stayed there, and it was a stop on the old Pacific Highway.” There’s even a story that Shirley Temple danced on the bar, but that can’t be confirmed.

In November 1980, a fire nearly destroyed the building, and it sat idle for a few years. In 1988 George Miller purchased the building. He lived in it and partially restored it, but then it sat idle again — until Colf Hepola and her sons, Dick and Bob Colf, purchased it three years ago.

Colf Hepola was born in 1917 on the family homestead on the North Fork of the Lewis River, and she saw the damming of the river create Lake Merwin, whose waters covered her family home in 1931. “I still remember the water rising over the locust trees,” she said.

Since then, she said, “I am always trying to save old things.” At her urging, the family was behind the reconstruction of the Cedar Creek Grist Mill that once produced flour, cornmeal and apple cider on the North Fork of the Lewis River; the old medical building that now houses the La Center Community Library; and the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Woodland. The Colfs are also restoring the historic Fanning House in La Center as a guesthouse.

When it came to Summit Grove, “my intention was to fix the roof,” Colf Hepola said.

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The restored Summit Grove lodge has so far hosted weddings, a funeral, an alumni gathering and a police chief’s retirement party.

Dean Baker/Special to The Oregonian

The family ended up pouring what Dick Colf would only call “significant money” into the upgrade.

“Margaret has always loved to restore old things,” said Liz Cerveny, the property’s volunteer manager and a former La Center mayor. “This was close to her heart. She saw this was falling into a state of disrepair and she just wanted to get her hands on it and bring it back to life. I am sure she pushed the boys to take it on.”

Now, restored with antique gas pumps, the revived Summit Grove lodge sits among newly constructed waterfalls and towering rock gardens, trees and foliage. The landscaping even includes nurse logs hauled from the nearby forest to add to the naturalistic setting.

The sign in front is posted on a cedar log harvested from the Colf family farm just below Merwin Dam, Dick Colf said.

“It looks real good out there,” he said, giving the log a pat. “Cedar lasts a long time.”

Balcony gardens compliment condo life – Sun

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While moving into a condo can mean less time spent on landscaping maintenance, residents who are interested in gardening can still turn their condo balconies into a vegetation oasis. With just a little work and effort, resourceful residents can use their balconies to grow vibrant gardens.

John Scheifel of Fort Lauderdale always had a garden in his backyard, so when he moved into a condo, he didn’t plan to stop gardening. While his space is limited, Scheifel said he’s still able get his hands in the soil in his condo garden, which consists of an herb garden and various plants, palms and ferns.

“It’s so easy. Once you get your system up, you’ve got it made,” he said. “If [condo residents] knew how to do it, I think more people would.”

With more than 20 years of condo gardening experience on his balcony, Scheifel said his condo association only advises him to make sure no water drips down to the unit below. To prevent that, he recommends using square saucers to catch any excess water.

Attorney Lisa Magill of Becker Poliakoff P.A., which specializes in condo and community association law, said excess water spilling down on neighbors below and too much weight on the balcony are just some of the reasons why a board of directors may want to regulate what owners place on their patios or balconies.

“The association typically bears responsibility for the structural maintenance and repair of the balconies,” she said.

Scheifel said that when residents start a balcony garden, it’s important that they use big pots so that plants don’t dry out quickly. He also uses a water-drip system that has tubes from a main line regulating how much water the plants can receive. His condo balcony faces north but still gets enough sun to have a thriving garden.

“I always loved playing in the dirt and I’m still able to do that,” he said.

Another challenge for condo residents wanting a garden on their balcony can be the weather. Open balconies can get windy, but Chuck Nicholls, president of the Equality Park Garden Club, said plexiglass can be used to reduce wind.

Condos located by the beach and Intracoastal Waterway can also be subjected to saltwater elements, which can be harmful to plants. Nicholls recommended focusing on native plants because they’ve grown accustomed to the environment and can withstand the wind and salt.

For residents looking for gardening advice, Nicholls’ garden club offers free consultation services and hosts meetings at 7:30 p.m. on the third Wednesday of every month at the Pride Center, 2040 N. Dixie Highway in Wilton Manors. Memberships are $20, and meetings feature a variety of gardening experts who offer tips on various botanical gardening methods.

“Most of the speakers we have, there’s something you can learn that you can adapt to your balcony,” Nicholls said. “The purpose is to educate people on what gardening they can do. There are some great things you can do on your balcony.”

For more information about the garden club, call 954-561-3535.

Top tips: garden cities and new towns | Housing Network | Guardian Professional

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John Lewis is chief executive of Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation

Communities must be involved in new towns from the outset: Development partnerships are a great idea as long as there is local involvement threaded through the governance of the partnership. The days of commandeering swathes of land without consultation and involving local people in the process are long gone.

Think long-term when it comes to finances: Unlike garden cities, the new towns were unable to capture land value for the benefit of the town itself as the value had to be returned to the Treasury. Letchworth has been able to capture value and retain the income streams for the benefit of residents, this is the critical difference. And this is the model that needs to be revisited as a solution to ensuring long term management of new places.

Katy Lock is the garden cities advocate at the Town and County Planning Association

We need to de-risk investment: While the government’s announcements should go some way to facilitate this, we still need them to provide certainty on funding and delivery mechanisms to reassure investors that upfront investment will pay off over the long term. Models such as the Netherlands’ infrastructure investment model where the Dutch municipal bank provided finance for development at low rates of interest to be paid back over 15 years could be useful in Britain.

Richard Blyth is head of policy and practice at the Royal Town Planning Institute

There is no distinction between new towns and garden cities: All large scale new development needs to solve the key question of what work are people going to do who live there, and where is this work to be located. The Howard concept was really about linking a series of garden cities, which partly by design and partly by accident has actually happened in Cambridge, Royston, Letchworth, Hitchin, Stevenage, Welwyn Garden City and now Kings Cross.

Investment in transport is essential to make planning work: I doubt that any garden city can be remotely self contained these days so what matters is how they relate to existing places and to each other. This requires the government to swallow really hard and plan transport investment along with housing policy.

Robin Hoyles is group land and planning director at Crest Nicholson

Garden cities were mostly designed before mass car ownership unlike the new towns: The rise in car ownership is one of the greatest challenges we face in delivering 21st century garden cities and we are encouraging our masterplanners to think innovatively about how the car will be incorporated successfully into our future large scale schemes. Rear parking courts that have become the norm across developments for the last 10 years are not welcomed by residents who wish to park outside of their front door. It means they park in undesignated spaces where there is not adequate space. The garden city approach gives us the opportunity to take into account where people wish to park and adapt the streetscape accordingly.

Handing open spaces over to local authorities might not be the answer: From past experience we have discovered that whether the management of the open space is handed over to a management company or a residents association there are challenges, especially in terms of the long term maintenance. As a result we have investigating new and innovative ways to manage these spaces by learning from trusts and assessing structures at Letchworth, Hampstead garden suburb and elsewhere. We are hoping to create a board of management type structure which would have 2 tiers. Depending on the size of the development the board of management would compromise 4 experts from backgrounds such as estate management, planning, architecture or law who would offer independent professional advice. The second tier would be a group of elected residents to provide some democracy in the process.

Colin Wiles is a housing consultant with more than 30 years’ experience in the social housing sector

We have come a long way from the original vision of garden cities: The original vision of the garden city was an estate of 6,000 acres of which only 1,000 was built upon. The city would be surrounded by farmland that would produce its food, and provide the town with goods from factories and workshops and waste would be recycled and used on the land. It’s a very modern concept (a true eco-town in fact!), although the vision was never fully realised. So yes, there is a distinction between garden cities and new towns in terms of the original vision, but in truth there is not a great deal to distinguish between Welwyn and Stevenage, except that the former features better design and is greener.

Sabine Coady Schäbitz is the director of the Collaborative Centre for the Built Environment (CCBE) at the University of Northampton

Would new garden cities be seen as an imposition from above or an expression of local ambitions? Would people actually want to live in completely new garden cities? Or would they prefer to see improvements and additions to the places they currently live in – making them more liveable? Overall there is a lot of opposition to large scale development or even just development in this country – despite the obvious need. This is something which needs to be acknowledged and worked with.

Kevin Thompson is chief executive of North Hertfordshire Homes (NHH)

There are two separate debates going on in this sphere: One is whether we have the capacity to develop and implement large scale new town projects and the other is whether they are a good thing. I don’t believe that previous generations that built new towns, garden cities or large scale social housebuilding after the wars were better at it, or less restricted by financial, legislative or capacity issues or the availability of land than we would be. The government is already trying to release public land for housebuilding. It has enough of it to create two cities the size of Leicester.

As to whether they are a good thing, the consensus seems to be they would be, providing the scale was sufficient for them to be sustainable. I don’t think this is utopian. Principles we would probably all hold to is that sustainable development needs to be based on environmental, economic and social components. Ebeneezer’s three magnets, in other words.

It is possible to be pro-regeneration and pro-new development: We must have the right housing in the right place. Empty homes are not necessarily the result of council or government social engineering, but the consequence of unemployment and demographic changes. For both new and old communities jobs, transport and schools are essential. Where urban areas can be regenerated we should do so, and we have a sad history of demolition but it should not be a stick to beat those looking to do other things in the right place for them.

John Hoad is head of planning at Campaign to Protect Rural England

Garden cities and new towns have a lot to teach us about collective social action to meet housing need: However they are very much of history and a particular time. Currently government tools are inadequate to create workable new settlements. We have no effective strategic planning to find suitable locations, we cannot acquire land for public use at existing use values and thus deliver land value capture to create the basis for infrastructure investment. The public sector thus cannot create the infrastructure framework for efficient private investment.

We have to be practical about what works now: It seems we are best working with the grain – organic development of existing cities and towns under strong planning control to prevent edge of town sprawl and waste of land – that creates the right incentives for landowners and counters the pure, individual, market decision making by the land owner. So even if we go for new towns we will need strong green belt and countryside protection policy to create compact energy efficient urban forms.

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Ask the Designer: Jill Metzler-Wiese

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Justjillinteriors.com

Your design philosophy in 10 words or less: Dont love it? Dont live with it.

Best way to dress a mantel:Clean it off and keep it simple. Fireplaces are a great architectural detail that need very little to make them come alive. For Hanukkah: Simple white candles placed in clear, silver and blue glass. For Christmas: Stockings can be nestled in a bed of pinecones and apples. For Kwanzaa: A kinara can replace the stockings on Dec. 26.

Best decor bargain you ever scored: Child-sized leather chair and ottoman that looked exactly like the one I bought his dad. Dads was real leather, made in Asheboro and will last forever, while Mini Mes was wipeable leather-like plastic made in the Pacific Rim and will be replaced after he outgrows it. Both pieces cost $18, including tax.

Every guest room should have: A comfy bed thats easy to get into at night and make in the morning (Translation: Lets not get crazy with throw pillows!), a place to put their stuff so they dont have to live out of a suitcase and an uncluttered night table with a good reading light.

How I turned a decor miss into a decor hit: A bad use of good space is a pet peeve of mine! Many downsizing empty nesters have what I like to call a slash room that is office/guest room. One client had a twin bed and a small desk in their slash room too small for either function. I designed a Murphy bed to cover much of the wall space and included a dresser with lighted makeup mirror, built-in bookshelves, a large workstation, room for a fax and a printer. The bed folds down to reveal great art, two swing-out lamps and a shelf that doubles as a night stand.

Favorite design blog: ABC News Made in America and Green Source.

Your design inspiration: I use the homeowners. Try to do the same. Look at the space from a practical-use standpoint. Family needs and styles change about every five years. I tell people to re-evaluate their lives and needs has a spouse come in or out? A child? Grandchild? Are you home more? Do you have a new hobby? Your space will need to change along with yur life.

Best idea for low-cost holiday centerpiece: For Christmas Eve, cut off the lowest branches of your Christmas tree. Lay them down the center of the table and pepper it with gold and silver ornaments and red votive candles. For Hanukkah, pick up mirrors of different sizes and shapes as well as some white or blue votives to sit atop.

Biggest design no-no: Knick-knack overload. Its very easy to go from accessorizing to being on an episode of Hoarders.

My best tip for do-it-yourself designers: Theres a fine line between following a trend and throwing your money away on a fad. Invest in a comfortable, North Carolina-made sofa. Paint, pillows, art and even reupholstering are a more cost-effective way to follow a trend and not end up with a budget-busting tangerine leather sectional sofa.